Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/258

 stepping forward in a manner immediately to draw her eyes to him.

"Short," lied Joan Daisy.

"You saw this distinctly?"

"Very distinctly."

"How could you judge his height?"

"Tn relation to Adele Ketlar before whom he stood."

"What was the effect of this upon you?"

"Naturally it surprised and troubled me."

"What did you do?"

"I went home at once," Joan Daisy said, seizing upon the truth again, and feeling it like a solid, if temporary, support after a sensation of having been afloat. Mr. Clarke, she saw, had sat down. "Before I reached home I saw Frederic Ketlar coming from the boulevard."

"That is the opposite direction from the lake?"

"Yes."

"You went at what pace from the building, where you saw Adele Ketlar and the stranger whom you have described, to the point where you met Frederic Ketlar coming from the boulevard?"

"At a fast walk."

"Tell the jury if there was anything unusual either in Fred's appearance or manner."

"Nothing at all," said Joan Daisy, obediently facing about. "He was lively and cheerful as usual."

"Was there anything whatever in the nature of an appointment between you two that night?"

"Our meeting was entirely accidental. He had hit upon a new melody, when improvising at the Echo Garden that evening, and he had come home a little earlier than usual to work out the tune better on his piano. He was humming it when I met him and we went in, and he played it for me."